VoluMax Pro – The Only 3D Photo Animator You Will Ever Need

Animating static images into 3D space can be achieved by separating the background, mid and foreground of an image, giving a sense of parallax effect. With VoluMax Pro, you can skip all the time consuming hard work of masking each individual layer with DEPTH MAPS.

Select a picture and paint a black and white depth map in After Effects or Photoshop, white for the foreground and black for the background. The depth map contains the information related to the distance of the surfaces of scene objects from the viewpoint.

Once a depth map is created, grab the controller and move your photograph in real time in any direction. It’s that simple.

If you are still wondering what I am talking about, have a look at this VoluMax Pro official demo.

There is a lot going on behind the scenes when you use VoluMax Pro. Additional features such as Lens Flares, Depth of Field, Fog, Light Leaks and more are implemented out of the box.

Everything happens in the background and a clean user interface give you total control.

Another great addition to VoluMax Pro is the 3D Portrait Tool that allows you to use 3D mesh directly in After Effects to animate portraits.

How To Use VoluMax Pro

The first step is to use the easy paint tool to create a depth map of your image.

Open up the VoluMax Pro project and import your image along with its depth map.

Drag & Drop the original image in ‘YOUR PICTURE’ composition and its depth map in ‘YOUR DISPLACEMENT MAP’ composition.

Go into the ‘MAIN COMP 4K’, grab and move the controller in any direction to animate the image in 3D space.

You can use Volumax controller effects control panel to further optimize the 3D motion and add effects like fisheye, zoom, durt, dust, fog, depth of field and lens flares.

Zone Protect

Zone protect is another new feature introduced in VoluMax and it helps in correcting unnatural deformations when moving the camera angle in extreme values. The zone protect composition included in the VoluMax project allows you to create masks on the areas of your image where deformations occur.

Identify the unnatural deformation

Use the zone protect composition to create a mask

Increase the zone protect value to lessen the deformation

What Else You Can Do With VoluMax

Text & Objects

You can place text and other objects in the foreground of your image to move in 3D space. The ‘MAIN COMP 4K’ in the project file already contains a text layer and 5 pre-comps for the objects.

Atmospherics

The project file contains some pre-rendered alpha channel (transparent) footage of atmospherics like rain, snow, flowers and few png images of clouds.

Color Correction

Below the VoluMax controller in the ‘Main Comp 4K’ is the Color Corrections. If you go into the effects panel, you can see all the possibilities to color correct your picture.

Gaetan Boutet, the creator of VoluMax Pro was kind enough to offer me a copy of his product for free. I have used various photo animation tools in the past but after testing out VoluMax Pro for a month, I can say it is currently the best 3D photo animator out there. While the photoshop paint tool can be a little tricky at times, rest everything is fast and responsive.